Standing Rock Sioux Tribe v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers | Hacker News Reader

Standing Rock Sioux Tribe v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

justice.gov

75 pointscinquemb31 comments

Some more coverage, that people might find relevant:

Democracy Now! was on-site reporting on the use of pepper spray and attack dogs:

"FULL Exclusive Report: Dakota Access Pipeline Co. Attacks Native Americans with Dogs & Pepper Spray" http://www.democracynow.org/2016/9/6/full_exclusive_report_d...

And was rewarded with an arrest warrant for their reporter: "North Dakota issues arrest warrant for Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman" https://usuncut.com/news/amy-goodman-charged/

Comment on ruling (linked in this hn story), from the activist side: "Erased By False Victory: Obama Hasn’t Stopped DAPL": https://transformativespaces.org/2016/09/10/erased-by-false-...

> Furthermore, this case has highlighted the need for a serious discussion on whether there should be nationwide reform with respect to considering tribes’ views on these types of infrastructure projects.

I find this whole statement strangely moving for a government memo.

I'm sure there will also be a popular cynical reading of this, and I can understand given the history, but hope springs eternal.

> Therefore, this fall, we will invite tribes to formal, government-to-government consultations on two questions:

Tl;Dr

Therefore, construction of the pipeline on Army Corps land bordering or under Lake Oahe will not go forward at this time. I hope this is the start of mineral and property rights for the land. We have people living and dying because they cannot use their land productively. This is socialism people. It kills people.

As a Sioux native, let us use out land white men do, collateral on loans, to build business, but you string us up telling us what we can and cannot do with our land. I why can we not be allowed to do what the white man does?

As a Sioux I approve.

Can you explain what you mean by this being socialism? It doesn't appear to be the socialism I'm familiar with here in Canada.

I imagine he means that the natives/first peoples don't have full property rights like those outside of reservations have. If I understand correctly, much of the land on reservations is "communal" (communist or the extream end of "socialist"). Apparently, there's a big issue getting title to land which according to the following article, explains the abundance of mobile homes on reservations:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoppisch/2011/12/13/why-are-...

Part of the typical "bundle of rights" in property ownership is the ability to abstract natural resources (plant, animal, mineral, energy). Without true property rights and ability for land to serve as collateral, the risk of capital lending is very high. You can't finance a home, you can't invest in a manufacturing plant, you can't get a farm loan, you can't mine the land, (both due to lack of mineral rights and that no bank will loan money for the equipment).

This is why reservations are poor; same reasons socialist/communist states were/are poor: Tragedy of the commons. This type of land socialism should not be confused with "social" safety nets like health care and social security. If I were a native, I'd be pretty pissed if the "white man" were running his pipelines through my territory, ancestral or not, while I got little in return. In my opinion, the reservations should be brought under the legal jurisdiction of the United States and treated as US territories.

Also, learning about Russell Means, a Lakota libertarian activist, is worthwhile: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Means

Could it be definition 1 or 2b here? http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/socialism

In this particular case he's arguing the government is appropriating private land (means of production) for third-party gain.

What socialism are you familiar with in Canada?

What is "socialism"?

"Something the government does I don't like"

Curious how this is socialism and why it's the 'white man' doing this; there's more than one race in our army and government is there not?

It's probably like how the Amish refer to outsiders as English. It's not literal. It's probably their short-hand for all non-Sioux (non-native) people.

So don't take it personally, or pendant about it.

Hear that Canada, it's also not literal socialism so don't take it personally

I'm not sufficiently versed to have this opinion probably, but why are we building pipelines all over the place? Isn't oil a dinosaur (heh heh) at this point? I mean, no, obviously the world runs on it, but I expect to in my lifetime see insane leaps in solar tech and rollout, huge jumps in the percentages of electric cars on the roads, driverless cars reconfigure if and how people buy cars, and so on.

Is the US really growing its oil use so much we need two or three new pipelines?

It's not use that has changed. It's production.

https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=m...

This pipeline removes 7 unit trains a day from the rails through Minnesota to Illinois, the bakken makes about a million+/- bbls a day, and will for quite some time.

The solution seems to be to drive the price of oil up then, no?

Higher oil prices are good for the Bakken. It's not economically feasible to get at that oil at lower prices, which is one possible reason for the recent over production from the Middle East. Drive the price down low enough and the companies working in the Bakken fold, send their workers home, and it takes a long time to build back up.

But higher oil prices do drive down the use of oil in general.

Oil has highly inelastic demand in the short term. People need to drive to work. Goods need to be transported either by train, ship, or truck. Planes are still jam packed with people.

In the long term high oil prices will modify demand because people will start buying more efficient vehicles. You can see this happening in the decade starting in 2001 because prices spiked and stayed above $3/gal for the entire decade and fuel efficiency rose to match it.

Not to forget one of the most "insidious" uses/dependencies of oil: food production in general and agriculture in particular. No oil, means, as far as I know, without radical change, less (as in not enough) and (much) more expensive food. That's even before one considers transport etc.

I really wonder why farmers don't run their equipment on biodiesel or bioethanol.

(Actually, the answer is bloody obvious. Admittedly somewhat off-topic, too.)

AFAIK there's been some success in Germany with being able to combine a big enough crop devoted to biodisel along side a meaningfully size crop for food - but oil, especially subsidized oil, is really cheap energy.

But there was recently a big scare connected to farmers taking subsidies to produce biodisel - and biodiisel production out-competing food production and/or leading to hike in food prices... so yeah. If you have X square meters in which to grow food, you can't readily use some large percentage of that for "growing" biodiesel, without cutting into your food grow area.

I'm sure there are certain biomass that will work as both, but it's not trivial to "just use biodisel".

Higher oil prices also drive up the price of food around the world. In a more well off economies maybe higher oil prices cause people drive a little less. In lower end economies it just means more starvation and suffering. Without a suitable replacement, artificially driving up the global price of oil is literally killing and maiming (through malnutrition) people.

Sophie's choice: people are either going to die from climate change, or from policies making oil more expensive to consume to slow climate change.

The question is as old as time: who is going to decide which cohort dies. And the answer is the entirety with the most might/force/influence, as always (unfortunately).

The IPCC says nearly all predicted deaths will happen in the future. In a future where by all current data, the world will be a richer more capable place. The future deats are mere guestimations as only the extreme limits of hubris would attempt to accurately predict the capabilities of people 50 or 100 years from now.

Whereas the deaths from higher food prices are here and now. You could easily get on a plane and meet the people condemned to die from arbitrarily higher energy prices.

> In a future where by all current data, the world will be a richer more capable place.

But climate change is already too far in progress to wait for a future where we're more capable. We're already capable enough, just need to funnel money to the right places.

"...construction of the pipeline on Army Corps land bordering or under Lake Oahe will not go forward at this time."

I'm almost certain that construction will continue at some point in the future.

Lots of ways still to prevent it.

I've been trying to find more details on the tribe's claim of burial cairns in the pipeline's path. Anyone have any links? How is it possible that these were missed after 15 years of court battles and planning?

Wow! What was going on over there? It must have gotten pretty big. Of course, the mainstream news barely mentions it.

Anyway, some Good news, for a change.

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